Resilient Child
by NCISSara
Summary: Statistics tell us that most children who are abused and or neglected will grow up to become abusive or neglectful themselves, creating a never-ending cycle of violence. How do some of them beat the odds? A "case study" of my version of Tony's past.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS or any of the characters. I am just borrowing them!**

He had first learned about "the resilient child" while in college. He had not had much personal experience with during his years of practice, as he dealt mostly with adults. But now that he was getting to know his new client better, he thought the term must have been coined just for him.

Once the thought occurred to him, he couldn't get it out of his head. He decided to re-read his old class notes on the subject. What he found further convinced him that Anthony DiNozzo might have to be classified as a resilient child.

_The Resilient Child:_

_ Statistics tell us that most children who are abused and or neglected will grow up to become abusive or neglectful themselves, creating a never-ending cycle of violence. These children are also highly likely to develop severe psychological issues, which prevent them from forming emotional attachments and leading happy, productive lives. However, there are those who grow into happy, productive, nurturing adults. They are called resilient children. _

_ Why do some children beat the odds? What do they have that other children don't? The answers are found within the children themselves. Studies have shown that these children have certain characteristics which allow them to overcome the traumas of their abusive or neglectful upbringing. These same studies have shown that there is no substitute for these traits. If a child, who does not already possess them, suffers the same types of abuse, they have almost no chance of breaking the cycle. _

_Characteristics of the Resilient Child: resourcefulness, intelligence, compassion, ambition, altruism, optimism_

After reading through his notes, Dr. Diehl decided to do a little case study on this patient.

As a child, Tony was severely emotionally neglected by his parents. His basic needs were met by a series of revolving caretakers hired, and quickly run off, by his alcoholic parents. His parents had never seen the need to hire a permanent "nanny" for him. There was a cook, who made sure that he had food. There was a maid, who made sure that he had clean clothes. There was a chauffeur, who made sure that he got to school. There were teachers, who made sure that he learned to read and write.

Tony would have been ok if any of these people were permanent fixtures in his life, but none of them lasted long. The ones who were around the longest were his teachers and they only lasted one year. Tony's teachers _could_ have saved him. They _could_ have noticed that the young boy in their class needed love and attention. They _should_ have noticed him. He went to the most prestigious schools money could buy. His class sizes were small. His teachers _should_ have noticed.

They didn't. Tony made sure that they didn't. Even as a small child, he knew that other families were different. He heard the stories that the other children told about Christmas, summer vacation, and birthdays. And he was smart enough to make sure that none of his teachers ever had a clue because he was smart enough to leave no clues.

The first time he realized that his family was not like others was in kindergarten. It was also when he decided to cover it up. He wanted to have the kind of family that the other children had, but even then, he knew that he couldn't. The only thing he could do was cover for his parents. No one would ever be able to tell by looking at _him_ that the DiNozzo family had problems.

The first holiday of the year was Halloween. The decorations went up at school and everyone talked about costumes. So Tony talked about costumes. He really, really wanted to be a policeman. But when his teacher said parents helped you buy or make a costume, he had to change his plan. He knew that his parents would not think about a costume for him and he also knew better than to ask them about one.

He had to think of a costume that he could make by himself, that wouldn't look like it was something made by a 5 year old boy. He thought and thought about it and finally came up with an idea. He would be a teacher! All you needed for a teacher costume was adult-type clothes. He had plenty of those. When he told _his_ teacher what he wanted to be for Halloween, she was pleased and made some suggestions for him.

He showed up on Halloween, dressed in a suit and tie, carrying an apple, a ruler, and a red pen. He told everyone to call him Mr. DiNozzo. When one of the kids told him that his costume was stupid, he covered up his hurt feelings by joking that he had dressed up as the scariest thing he could think of… a teacher! His teacher overheard him and was less than happy about his little joke. She had no idea _why_ he said it and he wouldn't tell her. He also got in trouble several times that day for bossing the other kids around.

But even though he got in trouble, and was pretty sure that he'd hurt his teacher's feelings, he counted the day as a success. No one knew that his parents didn't love him enough, or think about him enough to realize that he needed help him with a costume for Halloween.

His plan worked until the next day. All the other kids had trick-or-treat candy that they brought to school. He didn't have any because his parents had not taken him. They had gone to an adult Halloween party and not given a thought to their son. He had to lie again. He told everyone that he had gotten so much candy, that the other kids would have been jealous if he had brought it to school. His teacher fussed at him for bragging, but it was a small price to pay.

If he had just let one of his teachers know that he needed help with a costume because his parents wouldn't do it, they would have helped him. He could have been a policeman just like he wanted. They could probably have arranged for him to go trick-or-treating with one of the other kids too. He would have been able to enjoy Halloween like the others, but that would have meant admitting his problems. He did feel bad that now his teacher thought he was a bossy little braggart who thought it was funny to belittle teachers, but he couldn't see any way around that. He would try to make it up to her later.

Tony was resourceful. It helped that he was exceedingly bright. None of the teachers ever realized how smart he really was because his parents never signed the permission slips they sent home each year to get him tested for the gifted classes. The first time he ever took an IQ test even he was surprised at just how smart he was.

He did his homework- most of the time.

He liked to read- but his parents didn't take him to the library or buy him books.

He got good grades- but never excelled because he did not like to draw attention to himself. Teachers noticed things about the really smart kids and the really dumb kids that they didn't notice about the middle-of-the-road kids.

He had tons of friends- but none close enough to invite over to his house. He always made excuses about why he couldn't come to parties or spend the night with friends. These excuses got more and more elaborate each year.

It started with simple things like saying that they had out of town family members visiting, and grew into an entire, imaginary, DiNozzo clan. The kids at school could tell you all about the pranks that he and his cousin pulled, his grouchy old spinster aunt, his "black sheep" uncle, and his kindly grandmother. But they were all entirely fictional. Neither of his parents had any siblings and neither spoke to their own parents. Tony literally had no family members outside of his parents.

Looking through these notes from their early sessions, Dr. Diehl recognized that even a very young child, Tony had possessed the intelligence and resourcefulness to hide his problems from others, preferring to deal with them on his own. _I can check those two characteristics off the list. _He thought to himself. _But what about the others: compassion, ambition, altruism, optimism? Did Tony really have all of these characteristics at such a young age? Was that why he was able to break the cycle? _His musings on Tony were interrupted by the arrival of his 11:00 patient. He decided to continue his analysis later.

He really was a fascinating patient.

**Author's Note: I really did learn about this in college and it sort of stuck with me. I think that we can apply this to most of the team members. I may decide to "examine" all of their childhoods once I finish with Tony. Please let me know what you think about this.  
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	2. Chapter 2

Dr. Diehl checked his schedule for the morning and saw that Anthony DiNozzo was his first patient. This would give him a chance to do some more work on the resilient child case study he had started after his last visit.

DiNozzo had starting coming to him when his employer mandated counseling for him after the death of one of his colleagues. He had made it clear, early on, that he didn't want to talk about Kate or the circumstances leading up to her death. But since the sessions were mandatory, he agreed to answer the doctor's questions about other things.

Within five minutes of meeting the man, Dr. Diehl realized that his volubility was a defense mechanism. However, it _was_ useful. Tony talked, and talked, and talked and even though most of it was utterly meaningless; Dr. Diehl had the rare ability to pick out the important bits.

He liked the man; thought that he was bright, funny, and coping relatively well with the loss of his friend and partner. But as he questioned him, he started to notice a difference in the way he answered certain questions. Any question that dealt with his childhood, even tangentially, was smoothly deflected into a funny story.

That was when the doctor had realized that there was something his patient was covering up. So he subtly targeted his questions toward Tony's childhood and so far he had learned a lot.

Today, he asked him about why he decided to become a cop. And that turned out to be a very good decision. He learned more about Tony, from that one simple question than he ever thought he would.

Tony started to answer with an obviously (to Dr. Diehl anyway) rehearsed answer about his love of cop shows and movies as a kid, the way the ladies liked a man in uniform, the thrill of yelling "Freeze, dirtbag!"

But all of that was a lie, or at least not the complete truth. Tony was a cop because he wanted to help people, but that was something that Dr. Diehl had to work to pull out of him.

He guided Tony back to his childhood by asking him to describe the first time he ever met a real-life cop. Tony hesitated, clearly uncomfortable with the topic, but the he had apparently decided to trust Dr. Diehl, and the story that unfolded was something that the doctor would never forget.

Tony told him about his best friend, James, who he met at summer camp when he was twelve years old.

* * *

><p>Tony loved summer camp. It was easy to hide your parents' indifference to you at camp, where no one else's parents were around either. The only tricky part had been the letters.<p>

All the boys got letters from their parents every week. Some of them got one almost every day and Tony knew that people, the counselors at least, would soon notice that one boy never got anything from home. So he fixed the problem by writing to himself. He just dropped the letters into the mailbox at the beginning of the week and a few days later, they would call his name at mail call along with all of the other boys.

Most of the boys never shared the contents of their letters with each other, so after a while, he realized that he didn't even have to write anything. He just mailed himself blank pages each week. It was perfect.

It was also the reason that he noticed James. James was the only other kid who didn't get any mail that first week, but by the second week, thanks to Tony's plan, he was the only kid not getting anything.

So Tony mailed him a letter. It was short, because he didn't know what to say to this boy that he barely knew, but James understood. And they became instant best friends.

Throughout that long summer, Tony's other friends drifted slowly away. He didn't have anything in common with them, not really. But he and James became closer than ever. They sat together at meals, bunked together in the same cabin, played on the same team in every sport, and most importantly, they talked.

James talked to Tony about his parents. At first, Tony didn't know how to respond to the awful stories that James told him, but he realized that it seemed to help his friend just to tell them. And he found out that it helped him to tell his stories to James.

James was the first person that Tony ever felt comfortable enough with to be honest about his family. He confessed that he was sending himself letters and James, instead of looking at him like there was something wrong with him, eyes full of pity, told him that he was brilliant and started doing the same thing.

They sat together and watched the other kids interact with their families on the first parents' weekend. One of the fathers picked his son up and swung him around playfully. Tony was jealous and he did what was already coming so naturally to him; lied to cover up the pain.

"I love it when my dad does that." But then he remembered that there wasn't any reason to lie to James and he corrected himself. "I mean, I _would_ love it if my dad did stuff like that. He doesn't, though."

James burst out angrily. "I hate my dad. I don't want him anywhere near me. He never does anything like that. The only time he ever touches me is to beat my ass whenever I do something to piss him off." He looked a Tony, embarrassed at his admission and walked away.

A few minutes later Tony found his friend sitting out on the dock down by lake. He sat down next to him and said softly. "My dad hits me too."

Tony explained to James that the older he got, the more his dad seemed to hate him. When he was very young, his dad didn't even seem to notice him. But a few years ago, he seemed to decide that his son needed some discipline. Nowadays it seemed to Tony that he could hardly even breathe without pissing off his dad.

James' father was even worse. James had been hospitalized a few times with broken bones, courtesy of his alcoholic father. He always had a convincing cover story though and no one ever thought to investigate the injuries.

They told each other everything but it never occurred to either of them to report their parents.

On the last day of camp, Tony and James said goodbye to each other with muttered "see you around" "catch you later, alligator" "after a while, crocodile".

They didn't keep in touch. In fact the next time Tony saw his friend was his first night home from boarding school during Christmas break. James showed up at Tony's house, unannounced. He was hurt. His face was all bruised and his arm was obviously broken.

Tony handled it the best he could. James needed to go to the hospital. So he took his dad's car and convinced James that the doctors couldn't tell anyone about his father if James didn't want them to.

He knew it was a lie but it didn't matter; James was his friend and he needed help. He took his friend to the hospital, and while James was getting x-rayed, he called the police himself.

The police officer that took statements from the boys promised James that he would make sure that his father never hurt him again. Neither boy believed him, but he kept his promise. He was the first adult that Tony had ever met that really _fixed_ something.

James got to go and live with his aunt and uncle and no one ever hurt him again. Once James got over being mad at Tony for calling the police, he encouraged him to tell on his own father. But Tony didn't have a loving aunt and uncle to live with, so he lied.

That lie killed his friendship with James, but it was worth it. He helped his friend get out of bad situation and kept his secret intact.

Tony told him that his father had never really hit him. He said that he had pretended that he had to make James feel better and so that he would be his friend. He saw the sense of betrayal in James' eyes and was not surprised that he never spoke to him again.

The truth was that the night he took James to the hospital, Tony's father had beaten the shit out of him. He was pissed that Tony took the car, pissed that he was talking to the cops, and terrified that his son was going to rat him out.

Tony didn't _want_ to rat out his father. He knew that one day he would be free of him and until that day, he could keep up his cover. He already spent most of the year away from home and it was only a matter of time until he got too big for his father to beat him anyway.

He never came home for Christmas break again, though.

Tony could take care of his own problems.

But he also found out how good it felt to help someone else. And that was when he decided that he wanted to be a cop.

* * *

><p>After he heard this story, he knew that even as a child, Tony had demonstrated one of the other essential characteristics of a resilient child; altruism. He had given up the only real friend he had ever had because it was the right thing to do for his friend.<p>

It was sad, though, that he never understood that he needed and deserved the same kind of help.

As he went through his mail before leaving that evening, his heart went out to that poor little boy, sending himself blank pages in the mail.

**Authors Note: Altruism is defined as: **

**1. _the philosophical doctrine that the right action is that which produces the greatest benefit to others _**

**_or _**

**_2. the principle or practice of unselfish concern for the welfare of others _**


End file.
